SILICON VALLEY – Live-action comedy developed by Mike Judge; rated TV-MA; airs Sundays on HBO; 30 minutes. Episode 1.4: “Fiduciary Duties” (original airdate, April 27, 2014). Directed by Maggie Carey; written by Rob Weiner (6 out of 10)
The story so far: Richard Hendrix (Thomas Middleditch), Gilfoyle (Martin Starr), Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani), Erlich Bachmann (T. J. Miller), and Jared Dunn (Zach Woods) are employees of a startup called Pied Piper. Richard has created a lossless algorithm that could change all digital media as we know it, allowing for quicker streaming and less space needed for storage. They receive mentoring and funding from angel investor Peter Gregory. Meanwhile, they are up against a ticking clock as philanthropic rebel billionaire Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) and his company Hooli are trying to reverse engineer Pied Piper, even going so far as stealing Richard’s best friend Big Head (Josh Brener) to head up “Project Nucleus.”
In this episode: The boys are invited to Peter Gregory’s annual toga party, where Richard ends up getting so drunk he accidentally invites Erlich to be on the board of Pied Piper. Then most of the rest of the episode Richard vacillates back and forth on whether Erlich is in or out, once again facing the fact that he has no clue what he’s doing. They spend a lot of time talking around this episode of what his “vision” is for the company, something that completely eludes him.
In fact, as tribute to this, you can check out the new corporate website for Pied Piper at http://www.piedpiper.com/#hello
In the meantime, the folks at Hooli figure out that while they may have swiped Richard’s best friend when they brought in Big Head to help Project Nucleus, they didn’t get the brains of the operation. Big Head finds himself frozen out of the project and not assigned to anything new and falls in with another group of unassigned Hooli employees who do nothing while collecting a paycheck.
At the end of the episode, we also learn an important detail: Peter Gregory and Gavin Belsom have a history together.
Final verdict: 6 out of 10
This was an ok episode, with a few laughs and some good character development. However, it seemed like most of the jokes were at the expense of our heroes. While we can laugh at their flaws, it only goes so far. It was nice to see Erlich try to do something good rather than just be a sponge for once. He actually seemed to care, which was a nice change of pace. But these episodes are getting a little formulaic where Richard futzes around in a haze for 20 minutes only to make a bold, smart move in the last few minutes. I hope they can find a happy medium for him where he’s a little bit aimless and hapless, but not completely incompetent or unsympathetic.
Gilfoyle and Dinesh bring some much-needed levity with their constant stream of insults. And their lawyer who seems more interested in playing his Gibson Les Paul signed by the founders of Google is also some great commentary on the excesses of Silicon Valley culture. Also funny? That no one at Peter Gregory’s party seems to know or care who Flo Rida is.
I’m gonna keep watching, but we need to bring teh funneh a bit more.
CAST:
Thomas Middleditch as Richard Hendrix, T. J. Miller as Erlich Bachmann, Zach Woods as Jared Dunn, Kumail Nanjiani as Dinesh, Martin Starr as Gilfoyle, Josh Brener as Big Head, Christopher Evan Welch as Peter Gregory, Amanda Crew as Monica, Angela Trimbur as Langdon.